Hello!

Hi there – I’m Dave, for those that haven’t interacted with me yet! I’m a Project Engineer based in the south of England, and I use he/they pronouns.

How did I get here?

I’ve been in this incredible industry since September 2014, when I joined Network Rail as a Track Engineering Apprentice – from the very start, for a reason I’m yet to figure out, I found my calling in p-way, and it’s where I’ve stayed.
2017 saw me move into my first “proper” job as a Technical Officer (and later a Senior TO) for track in West Anglia, where my roles predominantly saw me carrying out an obscene amount of gauging, track geometry work (including measurement train data analysis) and track stressing.

The Present

I parted ways with NR at the end of 2021, and ever since I’ve been with VolkerRail working major projects – with my first and current posting being as one of the many Track Engineers on the East West Rail project!
It’s been a real learning curve coming to construction, but I’ve had the rare chance to get near daily practice in at building a railway from the ground up here. I’ve had the opportunity to work around some great specialist on track plant too, such as tampers, the NTC and the Kirow crane.
I’m balancing all of this with a Degree Apprenticeship in Track Engineering for the next 3ish years and non-engineering activities with my company’s LGBT+ network – the networks tend to lack in representation from on-the-ground staff, so it’s something I’m rather passionate about – so I’m usually pretty busy!

I’m always happy to answer any questions about anything mentioned above or general P-way stuff! There’s a lot that goes into it from both a maintenance and construction perspective and it’s a fun time, and I’m more than happy to use this platform to provide some insight.

(Just as a disclaimer: I won’t answer anything relating to opinions of companies I’ve worked for – any opinions I do provide outside of that are my own and not representative of any entity I’ve worked for/with.)